A Friend Like Me
by Dr. Q. Uirk
Summary: The war between RED and BLU has dragged on so long, it's hard for the men to say that they haven't always existed as such since Eden, but it's only been a few, short, blistering months. In a desperate attempt to grasp at stimulation, a few have been musing over just what would happen if Respawn got taken offline. The calamity that follows isn't entirely what they planned for.
1. When the Plan Goes Awry

_**AN: This is the same story as the previous one I abandoned four years ago. I felt it was best to start fresh as this isn't the quite same story plotwise I formulated in my head all those years ago, but it's still one that I want to pen down. But yes. Same author. Same premise. I cannot promise regular updates at all due to a number of factors, but consider this a pet project that I'll dedicate time to when I have it.**_

 _ **I am proceeding without a beta. Any criticism in the comments is much appreciated.**_

 _ **Thanks,**_

 _ **Q. Uirk**_

Chapter One

There are many kinds of stories in this world, but not all of them are worth hearing. In fact, some should never be told at all, but be assured knowing that this is a story worth hearing. And like most stories worth hearing, it begins rather mundanely. It isn't a story that is mundane for you or me; Our lives pale in comparison to the lives of the people I'm going to tell you about.

In nineteen-sixty-eight, eighteen people arrived at a lonely base in the middle of the American Southwest, and life wasn't ever the same again. They were mercenaries, each one well versed in a specific skill and talented at being different from the rest of society. They were poor, insane, disadvantaged, outcast, and desperate; they were exploitable, and they were hired to fight each other – day in, day out – as the sun would rise and set on the unchanged desert landscape. The ones I'm going to tell you about are a soldier and a medic, but for now, let's start with the misadventures of a spy.

It had been a number of months since they were first hired, but the RED spy already knew he was better versed in subtler hands of deception than the kind TFI used him for. Backstabs were a dime a dozen, and the repetitive gruel of each day made Spy lazy. You see, Spy had a better answer for this war than the idle shooting he was forced to perpetuate. But there will be plenty of time to belabor over the the mysterious intricacies of the RED spy later on in disgusting detail. For now he found himself caught in between yet another battle against the BLUs.

As if the redundancy of Gravel Pit's heat had finally and unquenchably burrowed under their skin, the rest of the RED team shuffled their feet and infrequently fidgeted with their weapons. The BLUs hadn't solidified their strategy yet, so it meant that they could drag their shoes through the gritty sand. Short but intense periods of gunfire staccatoed the air here or there and everywhere, and the BLUs fell back; nothing ever changed. Except for today; today had changed. It was getting late in the battle, and BLU hadn't managed to rush one single point yet.

Within their concrete tunnels, the BLU team's shouts and pants echoed chaotically. A clump of bloodied bodies were gathered around a dispenser as dying groans for "Medic" lingered unfullfilled in the stagnant air. For all their muscle, they couldn't keep a man alive for more than thirty seconds now. The engineer worried at his machine; the wrench contact sounded soft at times when a teammate's body would get in the way. His jaw was clenched, but he said nothing.

"Medic!" suddenly pierced the air ferociously, wildly, angrily. Nobody so much as glanced at Soldier as he uncupped his hands from around his mouth. The medic did not come.

"Pathetic," he grunted along with a choice curse or two before he retreated down the BLU tunnels and headed away from his team. Where was the medic?

RED's medic was holding up his gun dutifully and oddly cheerfully when RED Spy passed by them cloaked. He paid them little mind; he was attuned to the field and the dangers of stray bullets catching at his feet, so he hurried along. The ground was always hard enough that sand would not kick up behind, which he was grateful for today, more than any other day, because he was in a hurry today.

Spy had a meeting of some importance, which was why he was shirking off battle to loiter in a small dark tunnel between capture points – where, hopefully, someone was waiting for him in turn. When he entered the gaping maw of the tunnel, Spy inserted one finger under his collar and tugged, as though he were letting the air out of himself. It was his way of physically and mentally adjusting himself for his meeting, which he felt _very_ prepared for, but as he walked around the overhanging wall of the tunnel and saw what – or more precisely _who_ – was waiting for him, he had several questions.

One question was "Where is the BLU Spy?" The other question, you can formulate for yourself.

If there should have been anyone hiding in a tunnel during the midst of battle, why it should have been BLU's absent medic wasn't readily apparent.


	2. Persistence: An Attribute of Insanity

_**AN: I ended up uploading one of my early roughs for the chapter instead of the final product! I'm so sorry! I hope it's worth the re-read!**_

Chapter Two

This seemed to become more and more like a drug deal every second.

Spy's knife was pressed against the BLU medic's throat. He had paused at first because it was so incredibly bizarre to find the BLU medic waiting for him there. Unless Medic was taking a smoking break - in which case, Spy could suggest several choicer places – then there was little other reason for the medic to have been there other than to sell him illicit hallucinogens, which was a perfectly reasonable hypothesis to formulate in the late American sixties. But Medic looked so expectant, too expectant to have been there casually for drugs or otherwise.

The BLU's medic was a very different man from the RED's medic. He was darker-eyed and slighter with thicker hair – although it was of the same shade as RED's. Some evidence of youth could be found despite the age creases in his face, but that was all any RED could say about this man lounging with his back against the hard-packed dusty wall.

He showed his face at whim on the field, if at all. To Spy, Medic struck him as a civilian entirely too incapable and very unwilling to join his team on the field. Once Mann Co. had started marketing their line of Medi Guns, he had begun to make more frequent appearances but seemed reluctant or unable to stay on the front lines.

But standing so close to him, Spy could now see everything including the color of his skin. It was olive-toned but still definitely Caucasian against Spy's knife pressed into his throat. Unnervingly, Medic didn't react to the knife at all. His eyes glanced down toward it quickly, then back up to the spy's masked face.

"BLU Medic," Spy quietly acknowledged. The medic's eyes were as blank as his own face, Spy noticed as he met Medic's gaze.

He flipped possible reasons for the strange meeting through his head, and the more of them he considered, the more unsettling this situation became. He was sure now that this was no accident, for he was meant to rendez-vous here, and the medic was not his contact, and he didn't want any drugs. (Although RED's soldier sometimes called Spy a "Hippy", Spy wasn't _that_ kind of liberal at all; RED Soldier had yet to learn the nuances between a flowerchild and what he perceived as Eurotrash)

Assuming the worst, his contact had been killed. If he knew the BLU medic at all, then he had also been eviscerated. Medic's gloves were indeed bloodied down by his sides, and Spy subconsciously fought the impulse to curl his lip.

Instead, he said, "I was expecting someone else," dryly.

Medic's lips twitched as though he were amused. "I know, Herr. You were to meet my spy," he replied, "The _BLU_ spy."

Spy idly wondered if BLU Spy's organs were still in their proper places, but he was more surprised by the rich baritone of Medic's voice and its light accent. It didn't sound like the one he'd come to expect: the almost hilariously stereotypical American World War Two movie's take on a member of the Nazi Party, which the RED medic had quite horribly mastered. The German accent Spy heard now seemed to have a slight Anglo-Saxon cant to it.

"Did you think to head me off?" Spy asked.

Medic seemed to ponder on this as though the half-remembered answer was only just slightly out of his reach.

"Perhaps." Medic smiled at Spy, but it was forced, and it didn't sit right on his stiff face. "Could I perhaps talk to you? Just talk."

Spy raised one eyebrow then slowly lifted the pressure of his knife off of Medic's throat. He stepped back, then flipped the knife closed.

"Then talk. What is it that you want?"

Spy now had another luxurious moment to size his opponent up:

Spy certainly was physically unimposing, but he was tall, and he was certainly taller than the medic. The BLU before him was broad shouldered but willowy in form. A close study of Medic's frame revealed his features to be rather sharp and tightly pressed against his skin as though it was drawn too tightly. The cut of his coat hugged his figure adequately but still flagged limply in the places where muscle should have filled it out. Beneath his clothing Spy surmised that there was only sallow skin and hollow bones, but even more telling to him was a particular hardness of the face and darkness of the lips that the two mutually possessed. Heavy drinking and a smoking habit would leave telltale signs. Spy could certainly recall a few certain nights of his own to his mind in the recent past.

"Why would you need files on our team?" Medic asked hastily.

Spy marveled at how Medic's voice yielded nothing easily to him. Medic's stance had a calm offhandedness to it that had to be learned. Practiced. Spy did, however, have to scoff at the foolishness of the question.

"I am a Spy, am I not? It is my job to take your things," he responded behind a wry chuckle. His mouth pulled into a polite smile as though he hadn't tried to cut through Medic's jugular vein a few moments before.

"Perhaps, but it seems a lot of vork to arrange a breach of such records. Stealing briefcases isn't complicated afterall."

"That's a very pragmatic observation, but stealing the same case over and over again becomes tiring for me, and my skills languish," Spy explained as the smile slid from his face. "But Doctor, I do gain a certain—advantage over your team regardless of my continued efforts to delay boredom. Yes? Besides, Doctor, I am sure you have as much fun with your own work." A heavy emphasis fell unkindly onto the mention of Medic's mysterious medical practices.

A loud derisive snort cut the air abruptly. "Knowing what we are allergic to hardly earns you more pay," Medic remarked sharply with a crease in his brow that quickly smoothed itself back into his skin, "In fact, it's only good for blackmail, which doesn't offer you a large advantage anyvay. On the subject of vhich," his voice adopted a musical cant, "whatever 'fun' you think I am haffing? Administration obviously doesn't care much about it."

Spy sighed. It was always hard to fool a determined German; he had dealt with a whole city of them. He also knew that the medic's stoic face and calm voice knew more than they let on. Of all the things that he was, he did not strike the spy as a fool or a man who wasted his time on petty endeavors.

Spy's hands faced palms up in surrender. "You want the truth? I deal in a lot of subterfuge, Doctor. It's true that it is not part of my job description as a combatant, but it does help me gain certain insights to administration—and what they think of us. Is that a crime? To see if I can trust my employer?" he questioned warily. His eyes caught the medic's.

Medic stared at him for a long time before he answered.

"Are you-" he paused to choose his words carefully, "that mistrustful of administration?"

A smirk graced Spy's lips in pleasant surprise. "Sort of. Yes."

"Why would you and my spy do zhat?"

"You are comfortable working for a shadowy organization without knowing its intentions? How much trust can they place on you to keep their secrets, Doctor, if they ended the fighting now? If they can't, then how disposable are you?"

Medic's breathing seemed to pause in the darkness of the tunnel, and although Spy could not see his face properly, he knew that the medic wouldn't be a problem any longer.

"I—might be interested."

"Pardon?" Spy snipped incredulously.

"Are you deaf?" Medic snapped back, "I might be _interested_ in helping." He drew his words out condescendingly.

"I don't rightly know how you could, but if I need something of you, then I will not 'esitate to ask."

Medic didn't seem daunted. He stared blankly at the spy again, then reached into his immaculate blue coat with silicon gloves painted in slowly congealing blood.

Spy tensed, and his hand inched toward the barrel of his gun. The leather of his gloves tightened as he kept his eyes on Medic. Spy cringed as the blood unabsorbed into Medic's glove's oversaturated rubbery pores smeared off onto the thick blue cotton of his coat. No matter how civilian this man was, Spy couldn't help but know that something was wrong with him. His leather glove creaked and rubbed against his tense knuckles, but Medic was rummaging too long to have been ill intended. It was only after Spy had too arrived at this conclusion that his hand relaxed.

Finally, with a grunt, a square packet was tugged free of the coat, and Spy morbidly noticed that it was covered with yet more dried blood that Medic was now idly sweeping off into the dirt of the tunnel. Spy's lips pinched together.

"Do you want zhis?"

Spy intook breath as calmly as he could muster to as he stared at the blood streaked manila folder being waved beneath his nose.

He only hoped it had been the file that the BLU spy had promised him, then he breathed deeply and gracefully extended his hand for the dripping folder. He wished that it were the other spy trying to intimidate him by gruesomely impersonating the medic, but the BLU spy had always been a taciturn man with grave serious eyes. This was not the BLU spy. This was Medic – who Spy was finding a healthy respect for underneath the BLU's own sunken black eyes and nappy brown hair.

Medic didn't readily hand the file to Spy. He instead turned the thick bundle of papers over in his hands and examined the surface distractedly.

"I corrected a few zhings—vonce I took it from him." Medic snapped his head up to look back at Spy as he said it. "See, he has been fuckin' you." Medic said briskly. The British cut of the words were hard against his German accent. "Some of this information is wrong," he said as he tapped the manila cover insistently with a red finger.

Spy frowned as a sense of betrayal lanced through his stomach. It felt as though a needle had been shoved through it and was sucking out his insides. "And what would a medic know about the Respawn systems?" he asked coldly.

"I know precious little about zhe mechanisms of zhe machine itself, but I do punch code zhe chips when I examine my patients. I am zhe one that knows their physiologies best," Medic explained with patience. His thick gloved fingers reached behind his head to touch the base of his neck. "Then I install zhem into zhe system," the softer tone made his German accent halt and stutter melodiously, "it's rudimentary but effectiff, and he's been fuckin' you." Once again the curse word came out as hard English.

"So you want me to tell him I am finished with him and what?" Spy asked curtly.

"That's up to you; isn't it?" Medic's bloody fingers carded through his hair in sudden agitation. "But there are zhings you should consider before you say no."

"Like what?" Spy asked dryly.

Medic – who hadn't yet moved a single stiff inch from the wall – seemed to sink into it as an exhale shuddered exasperatedly out of his body as though it was a chore to keep standing all of a sudden. His heels dug into the ground beneath his weight. "I can get you my own file. My personal file," he rumbled.

Spy's eyebrows inched up a few notches.

"Consider it, like a resumé," he said and then lurched properly upright under his own weight. It seemed as though he was having difficulty for a second, but then his shoulders rolled effortlessly back, and he strode abruptly away in the direction that he had first come.

"That I will," Spy grumbled at the German's back. He considered the file in his hands briefly, then watched Medic's figure become absorbed by the blinding sunlight at the end of the tunnel. As if it were second nature, Spy pulled a silver case of cigarettes out of his fine pinstriped suit jacket and placed one in between his teeth. He stared vacantly at the space where Medic had once been, then shook his head free of the image.

With the file tucked under his arm, Spy muttered "Fou," under his breath.

It made him feel better about the situation, as if everything that had just transpired could be condensed into the word "crazy". It couldn't, of course; one can rarely demean a situation by writing off events as ludicrous. But it helped.

Spy slipped the folder into his jacket, kissed his teeth at the mess the crumbling blood pasted across its surface would presumably make, and checked his watch. He could see that he had hours before the end of the working day; he had hours of precious secrecy in the barracks before the bunks - where they were housed - filled with the noise and smell of distractions. Soon only his footsteps were left in the sand behind him.

On the opposite end of the tunnel, Medic had collapsed onto the ground.

Blue eyes are pretty things. They are so often used by filmmakers to give a character an unnerving stare. They are ethereal. But brown is much warmer. Much more human. The eyes that looked up into the sky on that sunny late afternoon were such a depthless shade of brown, they were almost black.

Medic peered upwards. His eyes rolled away from the sun's intensity, but his knees remained planted against the sand and rock. The scorched ground burned through the tough material of his work pants. His large hands had clasped over his abdomen. A faint red spot on his coat marked the center of their pressure. The blood on his gloves had been his own. That of his teammate – who Medic had killed earlier - had already vanished back into Respawn. The BLU spy had fought hard, and the struggle had been frantic. Its evidence had been easily masked by the thick material of Medic's coat, layers of hastily wrapped bandages, and an unflinchingly cold demeanor, but now his tolerance for the wound had finally used itself up.

Medic grunted in pain as the wound throbbed dully against his fingers. He heard the hard impact of boots into the dirt behind him and shuddered. He was sure that it was another BLU, but a quick death at the hands of the enemy wasn't unwelcome either. Regardless of his feelings, his stomach bubbled uneasily at the morbid thought as he knelt grasping the cut in the sand. The footsteps quickened, and Medic gasped in another breath.

Underneath his left arm and around his waist he could feel strong hands pulling him up. He readily fell against the pressure. He was drained. The man behind him was solid and broad, and that was good. Medic grunted in thanks, but then he was being turned around like a ragdoll. Soldier's helmet loomed into view.

"Medic!"

Soldier was the only man he knew - who was inappropriately and unnecessarily loud in close quarters with anyone. The sound of his voice and the rank of his breath made Medic recoil. It wasn't until Soldier had screamed his title again that Medic realized that Soldier expected him to answer him.

"Jawhol," he muttered dryly.

Medic resteadied his back against Soldier's arm and glanced up at him through his askew glasses.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"What happened? Where's your Medi Gun?"

Soldier was unbearably close, although it might have just been the largeness of his personality stifling the space they shared.

"I vas attacked," he grunted with fluttering eyes, "by zhe RED Spy." He ignored the last question.


End file.
